Safety fears over parking at fast food restaurant

Police ‘powerless’ to act at retail park

FAST FOOD giant McDonald’s says it is “striving to be a good neighbour” after a North Yorkshire councillor claimed irresponsible car parking outside of one of its restaurants could lead to someone being killed.

Chris Jones said McDonald’s at Redcar Retail Park frequently has cars parked on pavements outside of the restaurant causing a major hazard, while on one occasion he visited it had been “bedlam”.

Coun Jones also said the police and the local council were also powerless to act since the retail park was on private land.

McDonald’s said it was happy to arrange meetings with him and continue to discuss the ways in which it was trying to mitigate the problem.

Coun Jones, who represents the West Dyke ward on Redcar and Cleveland Council, said he had become frustrated at the lack of response to his complaints and

accused McDonald’s of “putting profit over safety”. He said: “There is going to be a fatality before long due to this irresponsible parking and behaviour.

“There are constantly cars parked all over the pavement, (leading) mothers with pushchairs and disabled people with mobility scooters to have to go on the road to access the retail park. Cars accessing and exiting the retail park are also sometimes unable to pass due to double parking.”

He believes part of the problem is that delivery drivers have nowhere else to park, leaving them with no option but to park there too. “They (McDonald’s) don’t seem to let the delivery drivers park in their own car park, they reserve the spaces for customers and staff,” he added. “It’s a bottleneck and getting quite dangerous.”

Coun Jones said since he originally highlighted the problem with the firm he believed there were now fewer delivery drivers operating from the site and they were also gathering outside on the road at a right angle to where they were previously parking.

He said: “They’ve just moved the problem on, really.”

The Liberal Democrat said he had suggested that the fast food chain lease extra car parking spaces for the takeaway drivers in a large nearby car park to relieve the congestion being caused.